


working in greyscale

by vienna_salvatori



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Aromantic Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Gen, Oscar Wilde Is Fine (Rusty Quill Gaming), Sleep Deprivation, aroaceingtheline2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29714943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vienna_salvatori/pseuds/vienna_salvatori
Summary: AroAceing the Line day 5: greyWilde, exhausted, breaking, seeing the world in muted colours and half-formed words.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21
Collections: AroAceing the Line





	working in greyscale

**Author's Note:**

> this... this is a weird one, even by my standards. Fingers crossed it's intelligible. Who would've guessed writing an almost stream-of-consciousness-esque fic from the perspective of someone who's been awake for over a week would break the English language a little bit? 
> 
> content warning for implied arophobia, specifically in regards to the Cult of Aphrodite. Whether there was actually a problem, or Wilde is just a sarcastic little shit with a penchant for annoying people, is up to you.

The world appears to him in sepia, fading around the edges of his vision. Maybe from the heat, maybe from exhaustion, maybe both. Probably both. It doesn’t matter.

Oscar hates it.

There is nothing here, on this lonely road between a glassed mountain and a desiccated town. Just the heat haze ahead and his footsteps crunching on gravel, mile after mile after mile. When he looks up, swirling sands tint everything brown like a bad photograph, and some combination of glaring sunlight and windblown dust sends jolts of pain through his already aching eyes. When he looks down, his world narrows to a pinpoint focus: his own footsteps on gravel, a thin layer of fine grey dust settled over his shoes, a world in grayscale. Wilde hates these colours- they’re dull, washed out, tired- all the things he refuses to be. He’s never really seen the point of them, honestly- nothing beautiful or eye-catching about the in-betweens. Grey is good if you want to put all the focus elsewhere, but quite honestly, it’s not doing anything that black or white couldn’t do better. Grey is good for other people, maybe. Not for him. He’s the one wearing primary colours which really ought to clash, and pulling it off anyway. Grey- grey can be for the goblin- Grizzop, was it? Simple and straightforward. Good at his job, sure, but nothing particularly interesting.

Wilde wants colour. He could prestidigitate the dust away. Maybe even change the colour of his boots- red, perhaps, something bright and eye-catching in this seemingly endless desert. But thoughts are heavy, looming shapes in the fog that’s overtaken his mind, drifting on before he can quite get a handle on them. The shape of the spell slips through his fingers when he grasps for it. That’s a problem, that means he’s basically useless. Useless to who, though? Himself? There’s something wrong with the meritocrats and he doesn’t think he’s useless to them like this and the thought terrifies him even if he can’t work out exactly what it means.

There are things he should be thinking about. Plans to be made. Explanations, now that Apothis has come and glassed the place. He can still feel the heat of it radiating at his back. No, maybe that’s just the sun. Where is the sun right now? He looks up. His head spins. Back and forth, back and forth, like he’s on a boat in a storm, rocking, rocking, rocking. There are no clouds in the sky, though, he’s sure of it. He’ll need to organise transport for his team. His headache gets worse, somehow, when he looks to the left. Sun’s probably over there. He needs to do better than this or else the conspiracy he’s just catching the edges of is going to kill him and his people. Worse headache probably means glare from the sun. It’s in the east, left is east. It’s probably still morning. He hasn’t been walking all that long. Sasha made breakfast for them on the glass. The heat was impressive, even after a full night to cool. He’s not hungry again, yet. When he gets back to Damascus he can find himself an office, somewhere cool and out of the sun. Then he can think. Without the heat he’ll be able to think. The sweat rolling down his spine feels distant. He aches all the way to the bone but that’s distant too. That’s okay. That’s not okay. He’s too tired to care. His head still hurts, so he drops his focus down to the road again. Gravel crunching. The world spins a little less. It’s jagged and grey beneath his feet and he tries to pick out shapes to amuse himself but he’s too tired and they blur together. There is no breeze. His hair is plastered to the back of his head with sweat and his eyes are stinging. The world in front of him is grey monotony, a gentle decline. That’s good, he doesn’t need to think about it. He can think about the other things, like-

-he feels himself sliding towards something which is not quite kind enough to be unconsciousness.

It’ll have to do. One step in front of the other. That’s all he needs.

He keeps his head down, and keeps walking.

* * *

_He did see the Temple of Aphrodite in Cairo about it, actually._

_The meeting was rushed- he waited until after the LOLOMG were… gone, which meant he had to be organising transport for himself alongside a myriad of other tasks. Working out how they were getting around really should have been higher on his priority list, but in his defence, he did have a lot going on that week._

_The first cleric he talked to tried to cast a sleep spell on him before he could finish explaining why that was such a bad idea. When he came back around a few minutes later, throat sore from screaming, the panicked apprentice had already dragged Eren Fairhands into the room._

_Fairhands then proceeded to attempt exactly the same thing, which didn’t exactly fill Wilde with confidence._

_A few minutes later and feeling even less rested, which he hadn’t thought was possible (oh, how much he had to learn), he settled in for a chat in the man’s office and carefully, almost clinically, began detailing exactly when the… effect… had started, how it had progressed, and the (many, many) attempts he had made thus far to halt it._

_A few more minutes after that, Eren Fairhands started pressing a very particular line of questioning regarding affairs of the heart, the current state of Wilde’s romantic life, and if there was any specific spiritual or emotional trauma which was likely causing all of this._

_Wilde snapped out some pithy one liners of the sort he usually aimed towards overly eager admirers, rather curious as to why Fairhands thought this was any of his business._

_Fairhands took offence._

_Wilde took delight in Fairhands taking offence._

_Fairhands took even further offence at a perceived slight against his religious beliefs._

_Wilde decided to interpret Fairhands’ offence as admission of interest and/or guilt._

_Really, what was he_ supposed _to do? His feelings towards the entire concept of romance were far from complicated, even if they did stand rather at odds with the beliefs of the cult of Aphrodite. He’d approached them with a medical question, not a spiritual one, and if they were unable to recognise the distinction and keep their preaching to themselves, well, he saw no reason to play nice in return._

_Several of the clerics looked shocked, when Fairhands dragged him forcefully out of the temple and practically threw him into the street. Based on what he’d overheard (and seen) from Azu, the man was not easily angered, so Oscar was actually quite proud of himself for achieving it in such a short space of time. It would have been nice to get some answers, of course, but failing that, making a new enemy was always a pleasant way to spend an afternoon._

_And thus finished Oscar Wilde’s first and only attempt to engage the services of the Cult of Aphrodite._

* * *

They give him an office once he finally stumbles back into Damascus. He dunks his head in the sink and doesn’t bother to prestidigitate himself dry again, the sunburn stretching across his cheeks feels like it will boil the water away anyway.

He sits down. Papers stare back, lots of them. White paper with black text. Not staring, the paper doesn’t have eyes, but someone is watching. He’s not sure who but he doesn’t like it, so he gets up and closes the door. He sits back down. The papers stare back, it feels like there are even more than there were, although he’s sure he only turned his back for a moment. He raises one. Ledgers, probably. He starts running a finger along the lines, looking for something out of place. Not sure what. The numbers are abstract, now. Maybe he’ll stop when he finds a not-number. Might be important.

Somewhere, a clock is ticking. He’s not sure if it’s here or elsewhere. It feels important but the ticks are all the same, no way for him to work out how many he’s missing. Numbers stare back at him, black on white, black on white, black on white. He reads each one on the tick not the tock and gradually starts turning the pages. Black, white. Black, white. Nothing grey. The contrast should be nice but instead it’s sharp and cuts into his skull. It would be good to have something in between but without the stopstart he can’t find a rhythm or focus long enough to read at all.

The numbers change into something else. A language. Not his. The loops and swirls are beautiful and he follows the swooping of the letters, entranced. It’s like they’re flying weightless, black ink gliding on an endless sea of white paper. He’d like to join them, he thinks. Smooth lines. It looks easy, just a pattern to follow. He’s lost track of the tick, spent too long following the arcs on the page. Someone opens the door and he looks up, tells them to leave. They nod and scurry away again, hurriedly. He frowns, people don’t usually run from him. He likes people. Not right now, maybe- the ink is beautiful but it doesn’t demand anything of him. Not like people. People want him to feel and feeling is hard. All the writing wants is to be seen and appreciated. He thinks he can understand that, so he goes back to it. More entrancing patterns, black on white, black on white. The contrast still hurts. He can’t understand what the patterns want, why they would be so beautiful yet demand his attention like this, even when it hurts. He’s not sure he wants to understand it all. There’s something pleasant in the mystery of it, of trusting the swirling ink to carry him safely.

He turns a page. More swirls, black and white. No grey, never grey. Ironic really. Isn’t that what he does, operating in shades of grey, turning it into black and white so no one else has to deal with the ambiguity. The contrast stings. It hurts, more and more and more as he traces the swoop of someone else’s pen, and then it’s red, red, red, bright and angry and he drops the page because why did it change and the red keeps coming and maybe it’s him but why would he be red why not grey where the black ink bleeds into the paper oh wait bleeds of course he is not ink the red is him and that’s bad but he is so very very tired-

* * *

He wakes to red but a softer red but a concerned red. Eyes not his own wide in concern and yelling voices sharp like black ink on paper. The world fragments once or twice into something wrong wrong wrong dark and primal and sickly blue and it hurts but when he opens his eyes again the other set are staring still and there’s a steadying hand on his shoulder tiny and grey. And the world clicks, briefly. Grizzop. Blood on the papers.

There is news, there are problems. There are things he needs to address and he clings to the briefest flash of alertness like a drowning man grasping for a raft, because for all intents and purposes, that is what he has become. Grizzop is here with news. The others are not here, which _is_ the news, or part of it. He wants to help, he needs to help, he needs to fix this, but there are tiny wiry grey hands guiding him away, a sharp voice with orders but somehow still in greyscale, gentle and encouraging despite the pitch and speed.

It is not peace, far from it, but it is a respite, a direction. Straight lines like arrows through the city, taking the most direct route. Grey hands never fully let go of his arm. They will lead him one way or another, black or white, and Wilde can do nothing but fall into step beside him. Soon the destination becomes clear. Artemis is- yes. Artemis he can trust. Greys and greens and browns and not ones to let him get swept away.

There are questions. Some he knows, some he can’t answer. These are all about him and he wants to push the focus elsewhere, there are bigger things at play, but Grizzop is insistent and he may as well tackle one thing at a time. There are hands- Grizzop’s hands- supporting him, then searching. He’s not sure for what, can feel the brief moment of clarity from earlier dissolving away. It’s fine. There’s a certain wiry strength to the goblin in front of him, he’ll be able to hold things together even if Wilde himself isn’t able to. The hands are in his hair, now, surprisingly gentle, as red eyes and a long grey ear obscure most of his vision. Voices are talking around him and he knows he should pay attention but he focuses on the shape in front of him instead because he trusts it and voices lie all the time, he knows better than anyone. Then there’s a knife against the back of his scalp, ice cold, the quiet snip of hair tumbling free. Part of him wants to object, he knows he _likes_ his hair, but-

He feels safe. Is he meant to feel safe? He doesn’t think so, especially not with the blade this close, but he does. Maybe it’s the grey. He knows the grey, the grey is Grizzop, who works in black and white but not like some of the other monochrome people he knows. Grizzop doesn’t like him. He doesn’t lie about it. He won’t be expecting anything from Wilde but he’s here anyway and he’s helping. If Grizzop was going to hurt him, it would have happened already, but it hasn’t, so he’s safe. There are no expectations, no games to play. Grizzop just wants to fix the problem and move on.

It’s… simple.

Grizzop saw a problem, he decided to help, he identified the most probable cause-

-and, the moment Wilde steps into the cell, he feels the solution take hold. It’s all he can do to stumble to the bed rather than falling flat on his face within seconds. Simple and efficient and no ulterior motives, no tense conversations about his personal life which really shouldn’t have any impact on anything.

Boring and plain, but it gets the job done. Maybe grey isn’t quite so bad, after all.

He is asleep within moments.


End file.
